This seems like a no-brainer to you, because you want the change.
But what about all the people who don’t want that change? And how about groups in other countries worldwide who may not approve of their governments’ map-rewriting.
Apple would be completely nuts to start taking sides. It would do nothing to improve the products and would become a PR nightmare that they would waste millions of dollars to unsuccessfully deal with.
Let’s keep the ad-hom stuff out and not speculate on what it is I want. That’s entirely irrelevant to the issue at hand.
The point I’m making is that none of this is technical. These are business/political decisions. While Google or Apple may offer technical explanations and try to insinuate it has nothing to do with politics or business, this certainly does not come down to an engineering decision (as other companies’ engineering choices to do the opposite demonstrate). Apple does go up against governments all the time, but they do so in select certain cases and not in others. They know perfectly well which battles they choose to engage in and why. This is obviously one they choose to forgo. But let’s not kid ourselves into believing that’s just because “it’s hard” or “but that could set a precedent”.
Let’s stick to the issue of ads in Maps. Whenever mapping involves names, borders, or any other human concept, it’s an inherently political activity.
It’s my understanding that nomenclature and border disputes are a complicated daily headache for the global mapping services without many easy solutions.
Unlike ads in Apple Maps which has a very simple solution. Don’t do it. 
Dave
Having written for many years for trade magazines which are supported by advertising, I can’t complain about advertising too much. However, I do object to ads that get in the way of other information on the screen, like the maps themselves, or provide misinformation. I haven’t used Apple Maps much, but so far they seem innocuous. Google, on the other hand, is getting increasingly offensive in ad placement, which makes me look more seriously at Apple Maps.